Etienne-Maurice Falconet, a leading French Rococo sculptor born in 1754.

His patron was Madame de Pompadour. Influenced by the Baroque school of which can be considered a master, Falconet appears, in certain respects, as a neoclassical sculptor. His most famous work is the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, called the "Bronze Horseman" in St. Petersburg.

At first, he was apprenticed to a carpenter, but some of the figurines he create as an entertainment during leisure time, drew the attention of the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, who made him his pupil.

He found time to study Greek and Latin, and also wrote several pamphlets about art: Denis Diderot commissioned the chapter on "Sculpture" of the Encyclopédie, published separately by Falconet as Reflexions on the Sculpture in 1768. He died in 1791.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, German expressionist painter and printmaker, one of the four founder-members of the artist group Die Brücke.

The group was founded in Dresden on 7 June 1905 together with his fellow architecture students Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl and Erich Heckel, and its first exhibition opened in Leipzig in November of the same year.

After the rise to power of the Nazis he was expelled from the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1933, two years after his admission. In 1937, 608 of Schmidt-Rottluff's paintings were seized from museums by the Nazis and several of them shown in exhibitions of "degenerate art" ("Entartete Kunst"). By 1941 he had been expelled from the painters guild and forbidden to paint.

After the war, in 1947, Schmidt-Rottluff was appointed professor at the University of Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg, through which he again exercised an important influence on a new generation of artists.

He was a prolific printmaker, with 300 woodcuts, 105 lithographs, 70 etchings, and 78 commercial prints. He died in 1976.

Georges Seurat, French painter founder of Neo-Impressionism born in 1859.

In 1875 Seurat enters the municipal school of drawing, in the class of the sculptor Justin Lequien. Here she meets Edmond, with which maintained a close friendship throughout his life. In 1878, thanks to Edmond, he entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he studied until 1879. Despite his good will Georges not noted for its artistic talent obtaining mediocre results. Aware of this, began his work in the Louvre with great intensity copying the masterpieces of Raphael, Holbein and Poussin.

In 1884 he and other artists (including Maximilien Luce) formed the Société des Artistes Indépendants. There he met and established a friendship with fellow artist Paul Signac. Seurat shared his new ideas about pointillism with Signac, who subsequently painted with the same technique.

From 1889 Seurat began to isolate tired of the controversies surrounding his work and strife with the members of the artistic group.

Carlos Mérida, Guatemalan artist born in 1891. He was one of the first to fuse European modern painting to Latin American themes, especially those related to Guatemala and Mexico. He was part of the Mexican muralism movement in subject matter but less so in style, favoring a non-figurative and later geometric style rather than a figurative, narrative style. Mérida is best known for canvas and mural work, the latter including elements such as glass and ceramic mosaic on major constructions in the 1950s and 1960s. One of his major works, 4000m2 on the Benito Juarez housing complex, was completely destroyed with the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, but a monument to it exists at another complex in the south of the city.

Max Meldrum, Australian painter born in Scotland, 1875. He is known as the founder of Australian Tonalism, a representational style of painting, as well as his portrait work, for which he won the Archibald Prize in 1939 and 1940.

The family emigrated to Australia in 1889. Meldrum studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. In 1899, he won the Victorian Travelling Scholarship, under which he chose to complete his art education in Paris.[1] Soon after, he became dissatisfied with the academic conventions of the Paris schools and left them to study on his own.

He returned to Melbourne in 1912 and and set up his own studio (1915) in which he had a lot of students. Later he was elected president of the Association of Artists of Victoria.

Nandalal Bose (নন্দলাল বসু), one of the pioneers of modern Indian art and a key figure of Contextual Modernism. He was born in 1882.

A pupil of Abanindranath Tagore, Bose was known for his "Indian style" of painting. He became the principal of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan in 1922. He was influenced by the Tagore family and the murals of Ajanta; his classic works include paintings of scenes from Indian mythologies, women, and village life.

Today, many critics consider his paintings among India's most important modern paintings. In 1976, the Archaeological Survey of India, Department of Culture, Govt. of India declared his works among the "nine artists" whose work, "not being antiquities", were to be henceforth considered "to be art treasures, having regard to their artistic and aesthetic value".

Rudolf Hausner, Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor born in 1914. Hausner has been described as a "psychic realist" and "the first psychoanalytical painter".

Hausner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1931 until 1936. During this period he also traveled around Europe, visiting England, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. After he was designated a 'degenerate' artist in 1938, exhibition of his work was banned in Germany. He was a soldier from 1941 until 1945. In 1942 he married Grete Czingely. Before allying himself with and co-founding the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism his works were mainly Expressionist-influenced images of suburbs, still lifes, and female models, most of which he destroyed.

From 1966 until 1980, he was a guest professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. He also taught at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Mari(e) Silvester Andriessen, Dutch sculptor born in 1897, member of the second generation of the group of figurative abstraction, also known as 'The Group'.

He first attended the Haarlem School of Applied Arts and then at the National Academy of Visual Arts in Amsterdam where he was pupil of the legendary Professor Jan Bronner.

The period 1940 to 1945 marked a decisive turn his life and his work. Andriessen refused to be a member of the National Socialist Aryan association of artists. This earned him not receive any order and not to expose.

After the war, Andriessen was the most requested artist to create monuments and memorials to the resistence.

Galán was one of Latin America's neo-expressionist painters of the end of the last century and the beginning of this one. His paintings and collages are full of elements that usually represent his life.

Galán started his career as a painter in the city of Monterrey, Mexico.

He was first brought to attention by Andy Warhol, who printed several of Galán's works in his magazine, Interview, shortly after Galán moved to New York City in 1984. After that Galán started to exhibit in New York, Mexico and Europe. In 1994 he won the "Premio Marco" from the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey; in the same year he exhibited at the Center for Fine Arts in Miami, Florida, the Museo de Arte Moderno in México City, and the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, Texas.

He died on the plane that was taking him back to Monterrey in 2006, after suffering a brain hemorrhage.

Rudolf Schlichter, German artist born in 1890, considered one of the most important representatives of the movement Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).

He studied with Hans Thoma and Wilhelm Trübner at the Academy of Karlsruhe. Called to military service during the First World War, held a hunger strike to secure an early release, and in 1919 moved to Berlin where he joined the Communist Party of Germany and the "November" group. He joined at a fair in 1920 and also worked as an illustrator for various newspapers.

In 1925 Schlichter participated in the exhibition "Neue Sachlichkeit" in the Kunsthalle Mannheim. When Hitler came to power, ending the Weimar Republic, his activities were severely limited. In 1935 he returned to Stuttgart, and four years later to Munich. In 1937 his works were labeled degenerate art, and in 1939 the Nazi authorities forbade expose. His workshop was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1942. He died in Munich in 1955.

Nikolai Antonovich Mukho (Никола́й Анто́нович Мухо́), Russian Soviet painter born in 1913, lived and worked in Leningrad, regarded as one of representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, most famous for his portrait painting.From 1934-1940 he studied at Tavricheskaya Art School in Leningrad. After graduation he entered in the painting department of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.In August 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army. He was a veteran of World War II, participated in the defense of Leningrad. After being wounded and demobilized in late 1943, Nikolai Mukho returned to the institute. He studied under Mikhail Bernshtein, Semion Abugov, Alexander Zaytsev and Genrikh Pavlovsky, Gleb Savinov.In 1950 Nikolai Mukho graduated from Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Boris Ioganson personal workshop. Since 1951 he participated in Art Exhibitions. He painted portraits, genre and historical compositions, seascapes, landscapes, sketches from the life. In 1957 he was admitted to the Leningrad Union of Artists.He died in 1986.Wikipedia

This is an open art blog, so you could find images eventually offensive or umconfortable.

If you're an artist and find here images of your art you want to be removed, just tell me and I'll do it immediately. I try to ask for permission always if artist is alive and there's a way to contact, bot not always is possible and there are things I think worth to be known.

In any case, the copyrights of all the images contained in this blog, except where noted, belong to the artists or the legal owners of such rights, and have been published nonprofit and for the only purpose of make the works known to the general public.

Enjoy "El Hurgador", make any comment you like (respecting artists, other visitors and myself), make suggestions, critics, leave your opinions and make your contributions. Always welcome.